Entries tagged with too much to do

Posts I want to make when there is time (a.k.a. not this week), in no particular order:

- Unanticipated long-term snow-related issues*- Request for recommendations for seeing/eating/staying in San Francisco- What it was like to take a R.A.D. class while having a consent play kink- The Fall: It was pretty great- Crowdsourcing -- well, crowd-confirming -- Club Vivid vid material- End of epic TOS rewatch with iggy

*Post I will make now: The subject lines of emails from coworkers in my inbox Tuesday morning.

Severe Orange Line delaysComically severe for Medford busses35 minute delay on commuter railTwo hour train ride and counting...On the bus, packed in tight. Moving slowly...Every road into the city is a parking lotI feel better knowing we're all in this together

In closing, a photo from our three-hour tropical getaway at the Gardner last week:

Happy November. We have achieved sleet! I guess that means it's okay to turn on the heat today. It's not remarkably early in the season for a (second, btw) nor'easter, but it's odd to see snow falling while the trees are still mostly leafed.

Well, we'll see if roasting this tray of vegetables takes care of some of the chill in here.

While I have had a blast doing and seeing so many different things lately -- I checked the calendar and there were 18 out-of-the-ordinary events in a month where usually there are like two, yeesh -- it's a relief to be heading into a few days of nothing but work and gym class Tue-Wed-Thu. Then my mom's coming for a visit, followed by pre-Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving busy-ness.

p.s. The Jeffrey Combs-as-Edgar Allan Poe play was enjoyable on Halloween night. ( More )

1. The melody, harmony, vocal quality and especially the chord progression in Hero by Family of the Year bring me right back to growing up listening to the radio in the '80s. Probably reminds me of Phil Collins' and David Crosby's* own Hero. Maybe even the simple, earnest song that ended the second Care Bears movie, Forever Young by Carol Parks (not the same as Rod Stewart's).

2. Finished S6 of True Blood. Because of... stuff... I went back and rewatched The Scene with Godric (YouTube; spoilers) from S2's "I Will Rise Up." It's still excellent. I still love it in a way that's hard to articulate. The blood tears, the raw emotion, the ancient relationship, the slipping between languages. The unremarked-upon homosexual overtones. The crack in a favorite character's persona. Eric has never been so beautiful, kneeling there with his voice breaking. And enriching it all is the echo of Marius/Armand.

3. Mostly, though, lately I am too full of things. Emotions all over the place. It took longer than it should have to realize that the inability to write so much as an email or concentrate at work or sit still long enough to add clips to a vid, and the general irritability toward anyone asking me for something, arose from my trying to stuff too much into the week. Concentrating on nutrition and exercising, planning travel (more on that soon, it is going to be super), doing chores, consuming media, trying to make fannish things, balancing work and social events, worrying about budgets, worrying about health things, fighting poor sleep... Wish that habit of keeping too busy to brood were easier to fix. :/

4. Happy Easter, Easter-celebrating friends. Happy two-days-left-of-matza, Passover-celebrating friends. Happy Patriot's Day/Marathon Day tomorrow, running friends. My officemate is running. The heart of the city has been on its sleeve the past week, marking the anniversary of what happened last year.

Well, I'll be moving out of DC on Monday and into Boston on Friday the 13th. *boxes everywhere*

Yesterday was my last day at work. Aside from the final crunch (my exit memo ended up being 50 pages, since it was half memo and half technical manual and included a ton of screen shots), it was a good end to the job. We had a happy hour mid-week and went bowling yesterday, and people were really sweet and gave me cards and hugs and stuff.

I chose the restaurant for the happy hour, I confess, in honor of The Vampire Diaries. Two of the main characters from that series are Damon and Stefan Salvatore; the owners of this restaurant and a sister restaurant nearby are Damian and Stephanie Salvatore. Really, how could I not go there at least once? Plus, all agreed it was tasty.

Social appointments this weekend, the rest of the packing, getting remaining paperwork in order, squeezing in the last errands, some last-minute panicking (ask me the last time I slept a full night), then movers and a 450-mile drive. It's going too fast. But it's also exciting. A new story that begins between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

One day soon there will be time again for things like vidding and Kink Bingo and talking about how Iggy does hilarious TOS Tumblr write-ups during our online rewatch...

Life Things are Happening that I will talk about soon, and that has made things busy. As usual. What is the pathology for inability to chill out?

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Anyway, the second basement-cleaning trip went well enough aside from the grime. My dad handled everything well -- I underestimated his desire and ability to get rid of a lot of the stuff down there -- and the two of us made another big dent in the clutter. Let's see if I can remember some gems. On the Why? side: five or six boxes of hanging file folders, 19 rolls of packing tape, and several pounds of paper clips. On the sentimental side: early childhood Apple II floppy disks and keyboard covers for things like Stickybear, Facemaker, Iggy's Gnees, Grandma's House, Dinosaur Dig and Muppet Learning Keys. And of course EZ Logo and, later, Print Shop. Also some more adorable schoolwork. ♥ On the What the heck do we do with all this? side: a dozen boxes of computer software and piles and piles of computer hardware going back to at least 1980.

I didn't find the piece of kinky noncon "art" drawn on the back of some elementary school homework that got me into trouble with the school psychologist, but I did find a similar one from what must have been the same era:

Vidding quandary. I want so badly to include scenes from The Green Table ballet in my next vid, but the quality of the YouTube file that I snagged a couple of years ago (before it disappeared, whew) sucks compared to the rest of the sources going into the project. Yet it is the only footage of these scenes from the ballet that I can find anywhere. (There are some decent clips available of the politicians arguing around the green table, but that's not what I need.) Scrunchy face.

Speaking of vidding, Vividcon is this weekend. I'm not able to go, but people's vids will happen! Including jetpack_monkey's Starships remix! Excited.

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There was all this other stuff I wanted to tell you... Oh, good movies: Fish Tank, about a troubled teenage girl who seems to have an opportunity to turn her life around when she falls for her mother's new boyfriend (a young Michael Fassbender); Bliss (Mutluluk), about a young Turkish rape survivor who wins over her would-be executioner as well as everyone else she meets while on the run; and Daydream Nation, a weird/quirky heavily stylized Canadian indie film about some outcast teens and their parents and teachers during a pivotal few months of school, which I kept thinking about for days (and which contained a joke about Atom Egoyan, helping win my heart) even though it wasn't really about the student/teacher relationship that drew me to it in the first place. Saw The Queen of Versailles, too, and was interested in that dual fascination/repulsion way, but didn't think it was as spectacular or revealing as reviews suggested.

ETA: Oh, duh. cincodemaygirl, alpheratz and corbae threw a hipster-themed party (ironically, of course) the other weekend and it was much fun. In addition to the silly theme, the snacks and the opportunity to see some local fans who've been scarce of late, like v_greyson, roga was in town (well, in country) and managed to make it down for a few hours. That was great, though short.

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*cough* So, you know, hi. Thinking of you and reading your posts even if I don't comment a lot.

It's been a full month, I can certainly say that. Went to Florida, North Carolina and Georgia on separate trips, saw an excellent play, finished a couple of fics, read some books. Went to work. Squeezed in some social dates while I was home. Caught the earthquake but avoided the hurricane. (My family in NY didn't; one half still doesn't have power, while the other half almost lost their boat in storm surge high tide.)

Now I am back for the foreseeable future and committed to finishing at least one more line for Kink Bingo before the deadline hits and RL responsibilities kick back in. I wrote a fic for "held down" that ended up being more choking/breathplay or sex work, so that's on pause. The DS9 vid is back on the table, though, metaphorically speaking, and if it doesn't work, you're going to get a 50-image picspam, because I really like the fit for its square.

Re: books, I already talked about the Zelazny compilation, and may I also recommend a collection of New Yorker essays by Berton Roueché from the 1940s and '50s, called The Medical Detectives? I picked it up at Borders' fire sale and it's wonderful. ( They are diagnostic and epidemiological mystery stories… )

Fellow House fans might enjoy specific essays like "The Orange Man." I wonder how many essays in the rest of the book served as source material for cases on the show. ETA: Yep: the very next essay, "The Dead Mosquitoes," which I'd bet inspired the episode "Poison."

Re: play (Uncle Vanya at the Kennedy Center), Hugo Weaving was delightful, Richard Roxburgh as Vanya almost as much so, the dissonance between humor and everyday despair came together well at the end, and for the rest I'll direct you to alpheratz's review.

Also, a traditional Greek cabaret group called the Sophia Bilides Trio was playing the Millennium Stage as we walked to the theater, and it was glorious. Witness an example, only she had finger cymbals rather than a hammer dulcimer last week.

Re: this weekend's trip, there was a spa, which was a wonderful indulgence (massage! Jacuzzi! wine! buffet!), and also there was sushi and a lot of TV. I always end up watching shows at this friend's place that I've never or hardly ever attempted. This time it was episodes of The Closer, Necessary Roughness, Top Gear (U.S.), How the Earth Was Made, Leverage, Eureka, one or two others I'm already forgetting, and a couple of NCISes for old time's sake. They watch a lot of TV. Lately I've only been watching True Blood and catching up on House.

And then when I got back, the Vividcon DVDs were waiting along with a box of birthday goodies from synn. Hurrah.

They Want More is going to show at WisCon this weekend. This will be its third screening, after Escapade and VidUKon. I don't know why it took me until yesterday to realize this, but hey: I made something popular! Cool! One day I may even be in the same room where it is shown.

Also, my Secret Garden vid is going to run in a Vividcon themed show,* which is super-awesome, a) because it's Vividcon and b) because it's not They Want More. No offense to dinosaurs and Elton John, but this one has languished in its shadow.

*This is assuming I can get the %^$*! encoding to work. LlamaEnc, Vividcon's special one-button MPEG (a.k.a. con DVD) encoding assistant, doesn't work on 64-bit computers (a.k.a. those running Windows 7) like the one I now use for vidding, and Adobe Premiere has approximately five thousand export options for MPEG/DVD, none of which appear to produce a correct vid. This may end up involving two computers.

Four times invited, four times I've gotten a little thrill in my chest and done a happy dance in my chair. There isn't much equivalent for fic; people don't generally ask to read your fic at a con or anything. For that, the thrill I get is when an insightful comment comes in. And since I'm a writer through and through for life, it... means more to me. We'll see how the fannish experience progresses.

Next goal is to have a vid accepted that I have submitted to a con for the occasion. *eyes SGA vid that is finally in progress again* *eyes WisCon vids with something to say themed vidshow I just found out about that is focused on social justice and science fiction that that vid would have been perfect for had the deadline not been a month ago* *still going to try to submit Soccer Practice for Club Vivid*

...

Am still valiantly attempting to produce an essay on consent play for the kink_bingo ramp-up to the next round. The trouble is, there is way too much to say about consent play for a single essay, and I haven't settled yet on an angle pulled from my 1,500-word outline/brain dump. Maybe there will be two angles. "Types of consent play you can think about for your story" and "Great tastes that taste great together" (a.k.a. most kinks + consent play = even better), maybe? But then that leaves out "Why consent play works for some people," which is a common question. Arg. Input welcome.

ETA: Maybe answering the "why" could involve ticking through the different kinds of consent/play, thereby taking care of angle one. With fic and occasionally film or TV examples.

...

Um, but also I have real life errands and such to accomplish, so really I shouldn't be writing this or thinking about a fannish essay so much as I should be focused on finding a car to replace my expiring one and preparing for a newly acquired freelance gig, &c &c.

Happy almost long weekend, everyone. (Or ordinary weekend, in which case, sorry.)

Tonight is my first really free night since October, and it is going to be glorious. Latkes and candlelighting-by-phone and a Netflix movie. This weekend there will be a first trip to National Harbor and a friend's birthday dinner. I can catch up on House. I may even be able to do some (*shudder*) holiday shopping.

Fannish goals for this month:

Finish the 'aliens made them dance' story (Jan. 2008) for Flashfic Amnesty

One goal is achievable, right?

Plus getting the new computer and software up and running -- it's due to arrive mid-month -- so I can finish off some vids-in-progress. I am really excited about this computer. I customized it to have processing power out the wazoo, storage space I can't imagine filling, and memory that would make my current computer weep. Most of all, it won't crash every six months because it can't handle file conversion. Um, I hope.

I booked bus tickets home for the weekend, and somehow "Whee! The semester's over and I have all the time in the world to sleep and read and write fic and wander around the city!" became "Aack, got to finish this thesis thing and rewrite that last assignment and email a hundred people and then call half of them and go to dinner with my classmates and send out the remaining holiday cards and pack to get home to see people and go to the ex-company Christmas party my ex-boss invited me to and the dentist and start Chanukah and read this book and come back in time for synn but I haven't done any holiday shopping—" Frowny face. This weekend looks like it'll be taking the place of what Thanksgiving usually is, crowded and short on time in questionable weather. Unless—and I'd be happy if this were the case—it just seems frantic now but will instead be filled with open spaces of time in which to do the aforementioned reading/writing/relaxing/gift-getting.

Things I did read that you should too, if you like SGA:

A Boyfriend for Christmas by scribblinlenore - Great line after great line. A sweet romance at its heart, with just the right amount of angst and hot sex. "I'm not expecting you to put out, okay?" Rodney blurted out. "You're my consolation present, not actually my-- And it's not as if you're a hooker or something." He paused, thinking about how natural John was at faking intimacy. "You're not, are you?"

Stargazing at sga_santa - I love sci fi. SGA doesn't go far enough most of the time. This story does: an Earth-based AU with a permanently buggy Sheppard and an android Rodney. Slash. Rodney holds him, steady and tight and smelling faintly of ozone. Familiar.

Woven Together, Seamless at sga_santa - Sweet, funny, poignant team friendship, somewhat Teyla-centric, one wine-mellowed night offworld. She smiled again. "I have guarded the herds since I could walk, and have kept watch over my own people for nearly ten years now. I know a fellow guardian when I see one. Teyla explained to me the meaning of your name: Sheppard, one who protects."

I only made it through the first day's entries at that community; I'm sure many more gems have gone up.

It snowed last night, I think; woke up to a dark morning with slush on the ground. Rumor has it we're due for six inches Friday, though I won't be here to see it.

An email went out to my dorm yesterday: "Does anyone has scales? I have to weight my luggages." I think the person's first language is not English, but it sounded too much like lolcats not to share.

After a busy but very nice birthday weekend I had a dentist appointment after work on Monday and a doctor's appointment after work on Tuesday and got a flat tire on the way in to the office that morning but had it fixed with little hassle and then signed a loan promissory note and registered my bank account on the financial section of the school's website and paid my first bill and found that the school said they were paid but the bank said the money hasn't been withdrawn so tried to fix that and in the meantime arranged with my new building manager to let me come visit my apartment next week which is coincidentally around the same time a friend from abroad will be in the area which is cool but because my mom wants to come with me I also have to look up hotels since I can't ask her to stay on my other friend's futon like I usually do, and I went to lunch with my ex-manager yesterday and with my boss today and have been training two of my four replacements all week in between being innovative and productive because I want to prove that I'm not slacking off just because it's my last week and finishing up my own tasks that are so numerous there is not really any time for goofing off on LJ so to relax last night I wrote up a packing list and watched two Star Trek episodes and am considering watching a few more tonight because the letter I got in the mail today about coming up with well-considered thesis topics by Labor Day is too scary to contemplate considering I've been awake since 4:30 a.m. and now tomorrow is my last day of work following which we're having a going-away party until who knows when so I'll have to record SGA and instead of spending my first weekend as a free person sleeping and writing stories I'll be going into the city to see a Birthright friend for dinner and then to my sister's friend's rock show and staying overnight at my mom's only to be dropped off home early enough to pack her car with a grandfather clock she wants before I go to a morning picnic with my dad and—

Is where I've been and am and will be.

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Want to write up the last two Israel photo posts (photos having already been chosen, edited and uploaded). Want to do a Porn Battle ficlet. Want to finish a WIP or two. Want to reply to outstanding comments. Want to talk about birthday things. Want to post about the writing/performance thing and other assorted small philosophical moments that've been striking lately. Want to watch more Star Trek. Want to do a lot of things.

I've taken a day off from work after losing Saturday to Remix and yesterday to a combination of having slept only half the hours I need to feel human, going to a (lovely!) fangirl housewarming party, and deciding to try the train instead of driving, which translated to almost four hours of travel instead of less than two (although I got some reading done). The thought of using every night this week just to catch up made me queasy, so I called in one of the "mental health days" my manager gave me after the marathon project in December.

In three hours, I've already done 10 things on my should-have-been-weekend list. What a relief. I've worked from home a few times since the new year, but I couldn't tell you the last time I took a day off when I wasn't sick.

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In fannish news, "Substitute" was nominated for an SGA Kink Award (voting is here). I was completely surprised and thrilled by the news. I don't think the little guy has a shot at winning, but as everyone says, just the fact that it was nominated is great.

I've never had a fic nominated for an award before. House was the first fandom I contributed to online, and I can't recall any contests except for possibly a House/Cameron one. BtVS and HP had many, and SGA seems to have several as well. This particular set of awards is new for 2008. They've broken down the nominees into categories; "Substitute" is listed under "That's… Actually, I like that (Best 'I didn't think I'd like this Kink until your story...')" in the slash PWP section. You can vote for the fic you like best in that category or check out all the nominees at the main site.

Last night when I was feeling grumpy I considered talking about Remix and why I don't like when people log in with their sockpuppets and read stories ahead of time, since it keeps popping up on the f-list, but I couldn't figure out how to do it without making people angry, and anyway, enough griping for one day. The sun is out! There's fic to be written! There's soup to be made! Only two Mondays 'til House comes back!

Very busy lately, preparing for Impending Life Change and taking care of miscellany. Apologies to people I was supposed to beta for over the last few weeks, and to people who are looking for betas now. I hope I'll have time for it again if/when things start to settle down, but until then, please don't take it personally if I don't come by to read your posts.

Gah, and writing, forget it. I've already flaked out on two of four 'fests. This weekend is supposed to be for writing Remix. I can't figure out what to do. My assignment is tough this year. *scrunchy face*

On to more serious things. Last Saturday, my mom, my sister and I drove down near Philadelphia to visit my 90-year-old great-aunt, my mom's aunt, who's been ill, but is recovering, since falling and puncturing a lung (and subsequently developing a strep infection) a few weeks ago. We had to suit up to go into her room: gowns, gloves, masks. She has a trach tube and is on a ventilator, and she can't speak although she can move her lips, and her are wrists restrained so she doesn't pull out the tube, so she mostly lies there and looks uncomfortable; that was difficult to watch and imagine what she's going through; but her face just lit up when she eventually recognized us. Even if she doesn't remember we were there, she was happy that morning.

The Romantic scholar, slash writer and icon maker Atara S---- (astarte59) passed away one week ago yesterday. Although I knew she was ill with Multiple Sclerosis, she was young still, and I had no idea she was so sick; she was blogging with her usual enthusiasm just the week before. It's terribly sad news. Her essays on the Byronic hero helped solidify my thesis topic at school, and her other essays on, say, Picard/Q slash were just plain fun reads (even if they ran just a little too far with the argument sometimes). I have her book on the Byronic hero in film, fiction and television, which is another fun and interesting read. She was a House fan, too, and posted sometimes in the meta comms. ... We corresponded for a little while a year or two ago, and I was supposed to write her an email-letter about my academic path and how she'd played such an integral part in it. I never got around to it. I wish I had; she should have known about it. Now, I think the best I can do is tell all of you.

All is not grief in the land, however. For instance, there are still minor celebrities to ogle. Case in point: a recently posted black-and-white portrait photograph of Joe Flanigan, care of sheafrotherdon. I keep going back to study it some more. He's not the most immediately attractive of men, at least not for me, but the more I look, the more I ... want to keep looking. At the asymmetry of so much of his face—under his eyes, beside the base of his nose, his eyebrows and the muscles above and between them, his nostrils, his nose itself, the crease in his lower lip, the curve of his five o'clock shadow, his hair. At his narrow shoulders (so obvious in the zip-up fleece Sheppard wears, yet often concealed by his bulky military gear, biceps and weapons). At his eyes, of course, which, as many people over at that post have pointed out, gaze at you with far more startling, haunting presence than most or all of the other people included in the photographer's online gallery. Perhaps it's attributable to JF being an actor, able to expertly school his features so that even a neutral expression is compelling. Because it isn't "neutral." Can that expression be captured in a single emotion or phrase? What would you call it?

There are some fics I've managed to read over the past week or two, but I can't remember them right now. I'll come back at some point to rec 'em.

I am back, and up to my neck in work and holiday-season stuff, but happier than before I left. It was wonderful to be in Boston and Cambridge again, frozen precipitation and extremities aside, to wander around Harvard Square and gaze up at the ludicrously gigantic Christmas decorations in the Cambridgeside Galleria and Copley/Prudential mall, to gaze out at the Charles River skylines from the Red Line train, to walk across icy bridges and admire the wintry view along Memorial Drive.... And of course, to see two fabulous college friends, one of whom put me up for the duration (and got me into the Widener Library to see the reading room and book collection, and learned about yaoi with great amusement, and entertained me with stories about his love life such as a guy he met in Israel who liked to shout "Ken!" in bed and at first my friend thought he was calling another guy's name ["ken" means "yes" in Hebrew], and took me to a Star Trek party at one of the dorms, where I proudly knew the most out of everyone gathered) and the other of whom (who kept me company all day before and after my grad school interview) is making his annual tour of the northeast on holiday from Oxford and will be visiting me this weekend, yay. On the bus ride home, the trees sparkled with ice.

All in all, a grand four days away. It had the happy effect, as going back to Boston and seeing these particular friends tends to do, of reminding me that I can do far more than I'm currently doing in this job, of bolstering my confidence and reinspiring me to move forward in life. I have a lot to do.

Then, when I got home, what was waiting for me but two delightful holiday cards from LJ friends and a stack of books from my sister for the last night of Hanukkah? Between my own quick stop at the Harvard/MIT Coop and her gift, I am now looking forward to devouring:

- The Discoveries: Great Breakthroughs in 20th Century Science, ed. Alan Lightman. Twenty-five annotated scientific papers and commentaries representing what Lightman believes were, as the title suggests, the greatest scientific discoveries of the last century (which, in this case, begins in 1900 and ends in 1976).

- Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. My sister knows my taste; originally she'd put this back on the shelf because she'd thought I had it, and she chose Neil deGrasse Tyson's Death by Black Hole instead; but in fact I'd had Tyson's and not Stiff, somehow, so we went to the store and swapped. TMI.

- The Medical Science of House, M.D. by Andrew Holtz. More proof my sister knows me well: I would never have bought this myself, having read reviews that made it sound pretty terrible, but I'm curious to see if Holtz has anything interesting to say.

- A Life In Medicine: A Literary Anthology, ed. Robert Coles and Randy Testa. This intrigues me. The cover says it's an essay collection "by and for those in the healing profession, who are struggling to keep up with the science while staying true to the humanitarian goals at the heart of their work," and it includes pieces by Ray Carver, Walt Whitman, Anton Chekhov, William Carlos Williams and Hart Crane.

P.S. -- Anyone with recommendations on books/magazines/journals/websites to read to catch up on and/or familiarize oneself with the current state of any and all scientific fields within the next few months is most welcome to make suggestions.

So, still not much free/online time until mid-January, but in high spirits. Hope you're all doing well.

From Thursday through next Wednesday I'll be down in Asheville, North Carolina, visiting synn, who's now living there instead of 20 minutes from my house. It's her birthday Saturday, so the trip is partly a gift for her and partly a celebration of Deathly Hallows coming out and partly a gift for me too (five days off work! preceded by a three-day week and followed up by a two-day week!), since my birthday is the day after I get back.

In addition to seeing synn and reading the last new HP book and exploring a new town, my biggest hope for the trip is that I'll be able to calm down from the stress of the past few weeks (months, years, but let's not get too ambitious) and write, whether that turns out to be stories or long-overdue letters. (To give you some idea of life lately, my current to-do list includes: pack, see a friend who'll be moving away while I'm gone, make two doctor's appointments, move all the furniture out of my room, install and test a wireless card, re-read Half-Blood Prince, write up Order of the Phoenix review, write to grad programs, possibly enroll in classes, continue to look for jobs, have my third-anniversary review at work without hinting that I want to get the hell out, research medical copy providers, write the two stories that are due in August, and prepare for two lovely visitors next month.) Gah, stress stress stress. And when I'm stressed, I can't think or write, and when I can't write, I don't post (I'm embarrassed to say how long it's taken just to write this crappy entry) or even comment, really, and when I don't post or comment, I don't get emails, and then my inbox gets lonely. And by my inbox I mean me. But who wants to hear about that? Nobody, that's who. Another reason I haven't posted. Yet here we are.

I'd been eyeing slashfest for a week or so, and then she had to go and claim one and tell everyone else to claim one, and then I did. Except it's not one, it's three: one challenge each for Sirius/Remus, House/Wilson and Spike/William. I think the first two will be short and the third more involved. Never mind that I haven't yet finished the Wilson/Grace fic for 1sentence and that there's no way I'm turning down participation in hw_exchange.... *facepalm*

Moral of the story? You should all write something for slashfest and/or 1sentence and/or hw_exchange so we can revel in our overachievement together.

Excerpt and revise sections of thesis for submission to
Watcher Jr., the unfortunately-titled grad/undergrad offshoot of Slayage. (Oct./Nov.)

Presentation proposal for next spring’s Slayage conference
on the Whedonverse. (Oct. 31)

And, as of this evening, Panel proposal on
fanfiction/journal for the Southwest Texas/PCA conference in February. (Nov.
15)

This doesn’t take into account the list of to-do’s, which
includes such savory items as:

Write a long letter to a college friend who’s about to
disown me for lack of communication (and I mean that).

Reply to about five substantial emails.

Reëstablish
contact with favorite cousin and two teachers.

Make a bigger dent in what was supposed to be this month’s - no, make that last month's -
List of Books I Can’t Believe I Got Through School Without Reading (currently:
Innocents Abroad; next up: Wuthering Heights).

Make the annual slew of doctor’s appointments.

Help father finish painting the porch and re-attach the
gutter.

Continue two projects from work I’ve taken home, again. Am reconsidering the brilliance of this idea
after an enlightening conversation I had with a co-worker in the parking lot yesterday.